Mike Fisher — Fri, 13 Oct 2000 16:38:34 +0000

...As someone eloquently coined it: "Mike'll reply to anything, even if he doesn't have answer to the topic."

Hebrew support in IE

anat — Fri, 13 Oct 2000 16:07:27 +0000

Well, where were we?

Actually Microsoft provides good support for Hebrew on most of its software, including Explorer. One of Microsofts largest Research centers is located in Israel (smae as Intel!) so they don't ignore our little corner.

The problem is with Netscape, who really don't care about Hebrew support.

If you design solely for MS Explorer you can use the "logical standard" for Hebrew which allows you to write freely in the right direction and supports pretty much everything.

If you want Netscape users to be able to see anything you have to use the "Visual standard", which means writing everything in reverse and letting the browser flip it back.

If you insert the proper meta tags, Explorer will easily display "visual Hebrew" but it doesn't work the other way around.

In the end, if you want everyone to be able to view the site (including the 15% or so of Netscape users), you have to use the "visual standard" and write your source code in reverse.

Some kids set up sites in "logical", because they can't be bothered with flipping everything. But all serious webmasters that don't want to miss the Netscape and Mac users will use the more difficult to create "visual Hebrew".

I really don't know why this should interest any of you lucky people with latin alphabets and left-to-right writings...

If any Arabic writing webmasters are reading this, I am curious about what happens with Arabic, as they must have similar problems.

Anat